


let's find out (lights out)

by Nitzer



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Don't think about it too much, M/M, all members are mentioned but that's about it, but not really, lots of commentary on idol culture, mildly blasphemous?, not entirely accurate series of events, sexual tension you can cut with a knife, star crossed lovers (in more way than one), starts in no mercy era, there's not really smut but it is implied that jooheon is a filthy sub, they have like soulmate telepathy, this is like almost enemies to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21992401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitzer/pseuds/Nitzer
Summary: "I’m supposed to stay away from new kid. There’s a wrinkle in that, though. It’s hard to stay away from him. There’s a draw. It’s undeniable. And this whole mess has made me the king of denial."It's not an ideal start but sometimes gravity pulls stars to their demise.
Relationships: Im Changkyun | I.M/Lee Jooheon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	1. physical intimacy without emotional intimacy

**Author's Note:**

> this is all based on a gifset for the show eve (i think?) that was three gifs with the captions: "physical intimacy without emotional intimacy, emotional intimacy without physical intimacy and the terrifying possibility of both" but i can't find it for the life of me so if anyone can point me to it i'd be eternally grateful   
> title from "kiss me like that" by shinhwa

It’s probably not my proudest moment. But in my defense (or maybe in my offense, I’m not sure) I do see it coming. It is a long time coming. 

I know I’m the weakest link in the group, the one that’s the closest to snapping long before I know anything about the new kid besides he’s new and they’ve kind of bent the rules for him and we hate him for that. I just _hate_ hating people. I’m too soft. I want people to love me too bad. But I’m also too loyal to Hyungwon and Minhyuk and the others. And I know _they_ hate him. And we just have to band together to make sure that we debut without him. Just push him out until he’s not considered a possibility for the group anymore, until he goes back to Daegu or America or Israel or where ever he came from. It’s only until the show is over anyway. And then when we debut with the lineup we were supposed to debut with I can patch things up with new kid and go get drinks with him as my “old trainee” friend or whatever. I can keep up the charade of hating him for that long. 

Then we get paired up for a performance. And it’s been me and a vocalist or me and Gunhee since the competition started. I’ve made my preferences clear. Me and Gunhee suit each other, work well together, _like_ each other. I’m supposed to stay away from new kid. There’s a wrinkle in that, though. It’s _hard_ to stay away from him. There’s a draw. It’s undeniable. And this whole mess has made me the king of denial. Even thinking about him it’s always “new kid,” “him,” “the problem,” anything to make him less of a person to me. But I.M. kind of slips through the cracks. Changkyun might as well not exist but I.M. is a talented performer, a good rapper, can command the stage, is full of charisma. He matches me, pairs with me, compliments me and understands me onstage without words, with barely knowing me. We can trade lines on stage that sound like fully-written verses. It’s scary. I can tell I’m bending for him already.

It’s pretty much a done deal, a disaster in the works that no one can stop once we get paired for a stage. Hyungwon is there too and I’m grateful for the buffer, I just wish that it was a sturdier buffer like Hyunwoo who surely blocked Changkyun’s attempts to be let into the group or Minhyuk’s sharp tongue and stinging venom. Hyungwon never really seemed too concerned with the inner-workings of his group and was satisfied as long as he was singing and dancing and no one interrupted his sleep. While Changkyun and I keep finishing each other’s sentences and coming up with the same ideas at the same time—glaring each other down and wondering what kind of cruel universal joke this was—Hyungwon was completely unphased by all of it. It seemed unlikely that he didn’t notice what was going on but I wouldn’t put it past him.

Despite the cruel cosmic joke pulling us towards each other and Hyungwon’s marked disinterest, the stage is amazing. It’s almost _unbelievable_. I mean, we did like one dry rehearsal with the backup dancers and we’re wearing outdated black and white spandex and it _works_. It’s a little outdated and stupid and I don’t think we even needed the backup dancers but the song is good and the energy is good. Me and Changkyun don’t share a verse like some idol rappers like to do because that would’ve been even more of a disaster than it already was. But we do keep coming back to the other on stage—parting and then circling around each other, feeding off of each other’s energy more than the crowd’s. And whenever Changkyun gets in my face to rap about space or his dreams or becoming a star (I can’t remember what he wrote, I can barely remember my own lines), my heart hammers in my chest loud enough to drown out the music.

My heart doesn’t slow while the judges deliberate or give their critiques. It doesn’t even slow when we leave the stage. And that’s not normal. But I also can’t seem to untangle my gravitational pull from Changkyun’s either. He follows me to the dressing room—buzzing with energy, glowering like he’s _stalking_ me—a few feet behind me and never any farther. I can’t seem to move any faster to lose him either. We’ve both lost Hyungwon somewhere in the shuffle of getting off stage and the next group getting on which isn’t surprising. With all the performances still happening there’s plenty of empty rooms and unoccupied couches for him to nap on. And because my life is a joke and the universe is cruel, Changkyun follows me into an empty dressing room far enough away from the stage that all we can hear is the creaking of our hideous pleather suits.

“You did good out there.” I offer awkwardly. He did. We both did. That’s the problem.

“You…too.” He responds, just as strained. And we avoid eye contact because it might make the other seem too real. And there was no way Changkyun could be real to me. Not while the competition was still going, not while he could still slip through our defenses and win a spot that was supposed to go to someone else.

So, we let the silence hang between us, wiggling out of ill-fitting jumpsuits. I don’t look at him but I know he’s still by my side, not close enough to feel his warmth but close enough to reach out and touch. I know why too. I feel the tie between us. I feel something stretched thin the farther I try to run from him. It feels like a prank. It feels like I woke up after some wild party hand-cuffed to my worst enemy for shits and giggles. But there is no pair of handcuffs, there is no _real_ reason for us not to separate. No one’s going to show up with a key and unshackle us any time soon. It’s some unspoken draw, some cosmic click that I’ll have to explore when this whole thing is over. But only once it’s over.

My zipper gets stuck somewhere around my hips and I know these pieces of shit were probably made in like two days by the wardrobe department but I didn’t expect to get _stuck_ in it. I can wiggle my arms out of the top half but that’s as far as I can get out of the suffocating material. I want to go get Kihyun because he can always fix stuff like this, that’s what he _does_. But he’s probably occupied with his performance and I have no idea where Hyungwon went (not that he’d be any help honestly) so I’ve gotta do it myself or be stuck. I resort to just desperately tugging on it, hoping to brute force it without pissing off the wardrobe depart too much.

The horrible, frantic squeaking/rustling echoes in the dressing room and I can still feel the subtle crackle in the air between me and Changkyun. I _feel_ his eyes on me before I actually turn my head to meet them. He looks uncomfortable, annoyed—not _pissed_ , though, barely even mad—but mostly he looks guarded, defensive. He looks like a wounded animal backed into a corner. He’s still frozen, his hands hovering around a sweatshirt but not quite on it. And he’s just looking at me.

_He’s_ looking at me. He’s _looking_ at me. He’s looking at _me_. _He’s looking at me_.

I don’t kiss him and he doesn’t kiss me. We wouldn’t. We still had shreds of self-control left. We weren’t even supposed to be _looking_ at each other, weren’t supposed to be in the same room. We _do_ kiss but it’s just the natural workings of the universe that pulls us together like it pulls planets around the sun. Neither of us really participate. His mouth is a kind of comfortable lukewarm and I can feel the excess energy from the stage buzzing through his soul from this close. And the something that was pulled tight in my chest finally goes slack between us and I sigh in relief into his mouth.

It’s like the all the energy in my body from the stage, from the competition, from my whole fucking life finds a perfect circuit to run through in Changkyun. And I finally feel in-tune with something wholly and fully. My fingers curl easily into his forearms and the place where our chests are _almost_ touching becomes a tangible thing resting between us, charged and sparking. I don’t know why I’m bothering to hold him close like this like this could ever be more than a serious misstep in a soon-to-be illustrious career. But I am.

“You sound so fucking pretty like that.” He murmurs, his mouth barely off mine.

And my breathing fucking _stops_. I’d never been about voice. I’d never been about _pretty_. My voice was serviceable at best, good for rap. And I was all reversal charms—powerful on stage (whatever that meant) and cute off stage—nothing pretty or beautiful. But Changkyun, who I had never been anything but cold and nasty to, thought _I_ was pretty. That was just too much for me. I was already a horrible little people-pleaser, a needy attention whore. He couldn’t be giving me what I didn’t even know I needed. 

I whine, all high-pitched and needy from a place in the back of my throat I didn’t even know was there. He swallows it and I slide my hands up to his neck. And when he parts his lips and lets my tongue slip into his mouth I think, _maybe this is heaven_. _Maybe this is as good as it gets_. But I’ve always been a bit dramatic. He guides me back to the couch behind us and crawls into my lap. And I get huffy and pouty for a second because _I_ wanna be in his lap, _I_ wanna be small, _I_ wanna be cute, _I’m_ the princess. Tell _me_ more nice things. But then his hands are slipping into that ridiculous jumpsuit and rucking my shirt up and I forget everything else.

Every new point of contact between us brings me closer to understanding nirvana and I’m ready to be enlightened. His hands tease up my sides and his mouth travels down my jaw. I roll my head back for him automatically. “Be patient, ba—”

And I hear him choke on the pet name, swallow down the “baby.” There was no reason to say it. No affection between us. This wasn’t even supposed to be happening. “I can be baby.” I tell him with wide eyes and kiss-swollen lips. “I can be your baby boy.” I promise.

“Alright, baby.” He concedes, his hand stroking down my jaw to cradle my neck. “Be good then.” He warns. And I almost just go fucking crazy at the _idea_ of being good for him. I almost cream my borrowed pants.

Instead I let my hands wander under his shirt, pulling at it frustratedly and basically begging him to help me take it off. He obliges me, slowly, teasingly, a tremor wracking his entire body like it was so taxing to take his hands off of me for that long. Or maybe that’s just how I felt, untouched and waiting. My shirt stays pushed up on my chest, half-drooping on one side. And he leaves it even when his hands land on me again. He drags his hands back over my hips, dipping under the annoying pleather, teasing the edge of my boxers. And the circuit of energy between us that I felt the first time he touched me pulses in time with my pounding heartbeat.

“You’re gonna kill me like that.” I choke out, followed by a real moan or a whine or something equally as embarrassing and mortifying.

“Two birds with one stone, baby.” He murmurs back, our chests resting against each other. And he pushes his hands farther down the back of my pants. Or he tries. But the zipper is still stuck and his progress is halted. And he gets stuck there. And he gets stuck. And we can’t go any farther.

And then his eyes find mine—wide, pupils blown, pupils _shaking_ , eyebrows arched in surprise. And Changkyun, the more sensible one, the more together one, the better hyung if I’m being honest, the smartest kid to walk through the doors of this competition, takes his hands off of me entirely. “We shouldn’t be doing this.” He says sensibly.

And we shouldn’t. We absolutely shouldn’t. We never should’ve started. I never agreed with him about anything more. But I don’t say anything. I _can’t_. My kiss-swollen lips just hang open dumbly and I gape at him.

He snatches his sweatshirt with his eyes cast to the ground. He doesn’t look at me once—not even a fleeting and curious glance, not even to see if I’m gonna follow him, swing at him, slam the door in his face and _make_ him look at me—nothing. He just rushes out without closing the door behind him and I’m left in an eerily quit dressing room with a half-chub and a broken zipper. It’s probably what I deserve, though. It’s really all I could ever hope to get out of fucking around with the new kid.


	2. emotional intimacy without physical intimacy

It’s really Changkyun that mends the relationship between us and him (as it always had been— _us_ and _him_ ) even though it’s really no part his fault and shouldn’t be his problem. I mean it’s a group effort. But Changkyun does much more than he ever should’ve been expected to do. He lets the past be the past so easily, never even asks for an apology (but eventually he gets several, quite a few) and is just eager to move on.

It’s hard for the rest of us to properly hold a grudge once the final lineup for the group is announced and the competition is over anyway. One night we all go out without Changkyun and get really fucking drunk and really fucking mad and come up with half-assed schemes to get him kicked out. And then we wake up hungover with little to no recollection of the night before and we all just kinda give up. There’s really no point. Changkyun is good for us, he fits in with us really well, he offers things that Gunhee couldn’t (that we all _know_ Gunhee couldn’t). Plus Gunhee gets offered a contract with the company as a solo rapper and suddenly no one is really fucked over, there’s no reason to be mad anymore. So we all just agree that _No Mercy_ was _No Mercy_ and this is Monsta X. It’s an easy solution.

There is a little bit more to cover up between me and Changkyun exclusively but we’ve spent months pretending that I don’t know exactly what the inside of his mouth tastes like. I’ve spend months trying to forget that I compared kissing him to heaven, that there’s something in me that is only completed by him. It was probably only the adrenaline from performing honestly. We all regretted most of _No Mercy_ anyway, no big deal.

Except for one night when Changkyun pulls me aside after dinner—only me—when we’re heading back to our bunks. He holds my upper arm steady, makes sure I look him in the eye. And he holds that eye contact, unwavering and unblinking while he’s talking. “We can forget about _No Mercy_ now, hyung, it’s over right?” It’s not really a question. At least not the question he’s really asking.

With the way he’s cornered me, only me and made sure the others are out of ear shot. And the way he looks so determined and serious. With his vice-like grip on my arm and something dark playing in his eyes. There’s really only one thing this could be about. This is about something that only happened between the two of us. This wasn’t us versus him. That had already been settled. This was about his tongue down my throat and me begging for more. I guess neither of us really wanna _say_ it though. “Yeah, it’s all behind us.” I agree. “No hard feelings?” I offer.

He just snorts at me, his eyebrows raising at the phrasing. “Yeah, no _hard_ feelings.” He jokes and leaves me behind. And that’s it. That’s the end of Jooheon and Changkyun and their tangible sexual tension in Monsta X at least. We have bigger things to conquer and plenty of things to distract us after all.

Me and Changkyun end up close. It probably shouldn’t be a surprise with everything that’s already happened but it _does_ surprise me. I’m a big, sensitive crybaby and I know and I spend most of our pre-debut days crying over harsh criticism and missing my family and being hungry and tired. And it doesn’t take me long to break down in front of Changkyun. And then I’m always crying in front of him—into him, burying my face in his shoulder and _sobbing_ —until I realize that I cry to him more than I do to Kihyun or Hyunwoo. Until I realize that Changkyun’s always _there_ , always right next to me.

We’re always squashed up against each other in our little practice room. And we’re always away from the vocalists—practicing something else, watching different things for inspiration, our discussions always sound different. It’s only a little buffer between us and the rest of the group but it’s enough to keep us together almost always. It’s enough that I.M. and Jooheon—rap line, maknae line, something we are because of things we can’t control—quickly becomes JooheonandChangkyun. And he becomes some intangible, indefinable, magical thing between a best friend and a soulmate to me.

It’s hardly a gradual process. We burst through the wall between enemies and best friends hard enough to hurt ourselves. We crash into being as close as we are. Whatever scars I retain from the experience, I don’t feel, though. It feels natural. It feels as natural as the inner-workings of the universe. It feels like the moon pulling the tides until they crash against craggy shores. It probably would’ve hurt more to try to escape the pull between us. So we don’t even try anymore.

By the time we debut, it’s a kind of immediately obvious closeness that makes our fans giggle and shriek whenever they catch wind of it. We always pair up for games and we get caught spending our free time together out at restaurants and cafes. We can finish each other’s sentences but make a conscious effort not to while we’re in front of the camera (not only is it a little weird but it’s rude too, to always be talking over the other) but the few times it slips, it does not escape the attention of the fans. There’s not a lot that escapes the fans.

It doesn’t take long for it to escalate into Changkyun in my lap in every waiting room we’re corralled into, falling asleep against each other at every opportunity. It culminates with Changkyun sitting in my lap while Minhyuk is filming one of those behind-the-scenes videos I swear we’re always filming. We’re all beyond exhausted and I’m sure Hyungwon is fast asleep where ever he is. But Minhyuk is unwaveringly perky—not because he’s actually any less exhausted than the rest of us but because he thrives off of being annoying like this. He pans over to where we’re sitting but Changkyun has decided to stick his face in front of mine and just stare for the camera.

Minhyuk circles around us and tries to get us to move and maybe asks us a question. I’m not really paying attention. It’s not really about Changkyun anymore. I’m not the same kid that _ached_ to touch him constantly before. Minhyuk’s voice is just loud and grating this close and I don’t want to hear him. He’s trying to goad us into something I can tell, I hear “something something closer” and I want to roll my eyes because we’re _all_ close, _all_ the time. It’s nothing new for the fans. But Changkyun _is_ getting closer, bit by bit like the mechanical dolls we were posed as until his lips rest, unmoving against my cheek. It’s a bit of stretch to call it a kiss. But I’m sure it looks enough like one for the camera.

Minhyuk cackles or squeals or something else that goes right through my ears and into my brain and moves on. There’s nothing else to catch here anyway. Minhyuk’s missed his chance to catch us getting handsy on camera by like years now. When Changkyun backs up all I do is grimace at the spit I can feel cooling on my cheek. “You spit on me.” I complain, trying to rub it off.

He laughs at me like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.

His laughter’s always been pretty to me, been infectious, even as loud as he is next to me. “What?” I ask but I’m starting to giggle too.

“I mean,” he shrugs, “we’ve done worse, hyung.” The way he wiggles his eyebrows at me is exaggerated and terrible. But I get it. We’ve done much worse than leave spit on each other’s cheeks.

I shove him so hard he almost tumbles from his perch in my lap. But…we’re talking about it. A little bit at least. We’re joking about it. That’s new. It’s probably for the best too.

I don’t think the company trusts us to be a success. I don’t think Starship has trusted a single one of their idols since Sistar actually. And we’re just a ragtag group they’ve picked up from one of the million or so idol competition shows going on. So we are not treated with luxury. They confiscate our phones “until we win” but I’m friends with Jackson and I know what GOT7 was promised when they won a music show and what they actually got (it was nothing, they got nothing). So I’m not holding my breath. I’m not holding my breath for a better dorm either. There’s even something kinda comforting about four of us being shoved into a room and stacked on top of each other with our bunkbeds. I’ve never had a problem with close quarters at least.

It’s not really a conscious thing—my bunk being right under Changkyun’s—it just works out that way. The older members pick their spots first and there’s only one bunk leftover at the end. But it also doesn’t surprise me. The universe is always pushing us together and keeping us close. If we left anything to chance, we would end up together. Always.

It is a moment of stillness in-between a whirlwind, maybe the fourth in a string of seemingly-endless comebacks. And I just don’t have the energy to do anything but lay in my bed anymore. I don’t know what burst of manic energy Kihyun and Minhyuk are working with to leave the dorms in a whirlwind of scarves and padded jackets to go shopping but good for them, I guess. The rest of us are barely hanging on with the promise of a real break for Chuseok just out of our reach. And in the bunk above me, like always, is Changkyun. But for once he’s the only one with me.

He breaks the comfortable silence we spent most of the evening in. “Are you gonna go home for Chuseok?”

I roll over to face the top bunk even though neither of us can see the other still. “I think so.” I knew my family expected me home but I hadn’t bought train tickets or anything yet. Sometimes it felt foreign, slipping back into my own skin after spending so long on sets in heavy makeup and costumes. I wasn’t ready to try to be Jooheon again, I don’t think. Not in front of people who knew me my entire life anyway.

“Everyone else is gonna be gone for Chuseok. Minhyuk won’t shut up about his trip.” He laughs fondly because Minhyuk has never shut up about anything in his fucking life. We all got used to it.

“What about you?” I ask because I feel like that’s where this is going anyway. I have a feeling this conversation is about Changkyun and not the rest of us.

There is a moment of silence and when he finally exhales it feels like he’s taking the air out of _my_ lungs. But I’ve gotten used to those moments of feeling things that shouldn’t be, seeing things that can’t be there, hearing things I don’t believe in with how long Changkyun has been here now. “I don’t know.” He breathes out.

“You don’t know if you’re gonna go home for Chuseok?” I ask after a long pause. I’m staring at the slats holding up his mattress and trying to make a constellation out of the pattern on the underside.

He laughs, louder than before but with no warmth at all. “I don’t know where home is anymore.” The admission sits weirdly with me. I feel the tugging in my chest, feel some of the searing hurt leak onto me. But I don’t think it’s something we share entirely. “Sometimes I feel like this is the closest thing I have to home.”

And then the tugging feeling falls into place. I don’t have to sort through countries to try to find a home like Changkyun does. It’s always been right here. But, still, sometimes I felt safest here like it _was_ home. I felt comfortable confined to this little bunk, a tiny slice of an even tinier room like some caged animal but at least that was normal here. At least this was a shelter with other cages squashed up against mine instead of solitary confinement. I was understood here. I didn’t have to explain anything. When I went home—to my real home, to my family—I had two options: to not say anything negative about being an idol or to explain everything. But Changkyun _saw_ everything, _experienced_ everything with me. I didn’t have to explain what it felt like when a fan clawed into my hoodie at the airport again. Or feeling faint during the fifth hour of dance practice because they never let us eat enough. Or how all the things I said on broadcast that made the whole crew laugh were only said because I was so exhausted in every possible way that I couldn’t form coherent thoughts anymore.

“Isn’t that sad?” He finishes, his hand slipping from the top bunk and hanging down next to me.

“It is.” I answer quietly. “But I get it.” I reach up for his hand and link our pinkies together.

It’s not just that inexplicable cosmic draw that holds us together anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. But, holding his hand—knowing somehow that he’s crying up there without being able to see him at all—it’s different. It’s like I know whatever the universe was pushing us towards is in our hands now. It’s already happening and the end result doesn’t seem like such a tragedy anymore.

We may have stumbled but we weren’t staying down.


	3. and the terrifying possibility of both

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a reference to the poem "I Go Back to May 1937" in here if you also haven't been able to escape that poem since high school english class

One day we’re suddenly successful enough that the company books us enough hotel rooms that we only have to share in pairs rather than trying to stack all of us into one room. It’s hard to tell exactly when. Everything happens while we’re holed up in practice rooms or hotels and Changkyun and Kihyun are doing their best to talk to American reporters but we all feel like we’re just along for the ride. It happens too fast to hold onto anything. While we’re being carted between some airport and a morning talk show with a name I don’t think I can pronounce, the staff hyungs dump our luggage into whatever room is the easiest for them and that’s how we get assigned our rooms. And that leaves me with Changkyun. I know even before our manager takes a second card key out of the same envelop that held Changkyun’s. If it is left up to fate, we end up together. It’s always been like that.

It’s not like I haven’t shared a hotel room with Changkyun before. I’d shared plenty of foreign beds, sleeping mats and bus backseats with him. I’d shared enough of my life with him that nothing could feel weird anymore. It is a non-event, stumbling out of the elevator and eventually face-planting on some pristinely white, non-descript hotel bed. I don’t dose off, though. There’s this tugging, restlessness settled in my heart—an oppressive… _something_ in the air—that keeps me awake.

The hotel room is like every other one we’ve been in while we’ve been in America. A wide window showing off some, grey cityscape. Rough, ugly-colored carpet. Some landscape paintings to make the room marginally less sad. Two twin beds shoved onto opposite sides of the room. The sound of the shower, muted by the bathroom door. But with the door closed tightly it’s like I’ve lost the circuit my energy usually runs through and it’s just flowing freely.

It’s not the close quarters. It’s the _privacy_. I’m _always_ on top of Changkyun, as close as we can possibly get. That’s nothing new. It’s the closed doors. It’s the fact that it’s _only_ us. No other pair to share the extra bed. No frazzled manager crashing on the couch. No door to Minhyuk or Kihyun’s room. No fans. No cameras. It’s just me and him. Jooheon and Changkyun.

And I guess I never really knew what to do with that. I didn’t know what to do with _privacy_. I didn’t know what our relationship was like when we weren’t talking rap or trying not to make it so obvious that I knew what he was going to say before he even started. I didn’t know what to do with all the quirks in our relationship besides hide them. But with only the two of us—with the tangible restlessness I’m sure he shared—I had no choice but to figure it out.

Changkyun comes out of the shower damp, his skin blotchy red in some places, bare-faced with the same dark, dark circles we all wore. He looks at me, the same wired restlessness visible in his eyes but doesn’t say anything as he passes me. I can hear the echo of my heartbeat—of _a_ heartbeat—bouncing off the walls of the room, steady but deafening. It’s new for both of us to take a second to listen to the sounds and feel the things we always knew we weren’t supposed to. We got so good at muting every voice in our head that didn’t sound like our own and not flinching at every sharp pain that didn’t have a corresponding wound, so good at burying them down like we buried everything else as idols. We never had time to listen to everything that was there. It was always a burst of emotion—sharp and unpleasant—that we hid easily. We never got a chance to experience the subtleties.

I remember the first time, all violent tugging and pulling, an undercurrent dragging us further out to sea. And neither of us could swim yet. It felt like some deity was slamming us together like dolls for their own amusement. But that feeling was gone. This was for no one but us. Who else could it be for with the doors closed tight and no cameras?

He drops his dirty clothes and his towel on the bed across from me but he doesn’t sit down. He stays hovering between the two beds like he’s not willing to choose yet. We’ve shared so much in the years, we’ve been squashed up against each other in every way possible but I feel his hesitation zing through me when our eyes meet. _I never stopped thinking about kissing you_ , I think loud enough for him to hear hopefully. Because I haven’t. And it’s another one of those things that just sat in my mind, that I skipped over and never got to really experience.

I never really stopped thinking about kissing him. Not like it happened the first time. Not feeling like two paper dolls being picked up and banged together at the hips. Not just skin on skin because it was what had to happen. But that _click_ —the way all of the energy in me found the perfect circuit in him, the way I felt he could take me to heaven, the way he gave me things I didn’t even know I needed. I wanted all of that but better, _more_. I wanted him as a person, not as a body.

And it had been a long time since I tasted the inside of his mouth. A long time of thinking I didn’t need it, didn’t want it even. Because there was more to Changkyun than desperate fingers and lips on lips. There was more to _us_ than a hurried mistake. So I kept re-imagining the kiss every time I discovered some new, wordless connection to Changkyun, every time I felt homesick, every time my body couldn’t keep up but my mind wouldn’t stop. We would kiss softer, be laying on a bed somewhere, in our pajamas, under the soft light of the sunrise. Or he kisses me quiet in our shared studio, his hair soft and his favorite hoodie in-between my fingers. Or we’d kiss in the living room of the dorms with the twinkling lights of the little Christmas tree Kihyun got us, the windows fogged up with warmth. There was a lot to imagine with a future in front of us. I don’t want to relive what we did before, I want a chance to redo it.

He places one hand on my bed cautiously, sliding it across the comforter. I keep my eyes glued to his hand, the sound of a heartbeat still echoing in my ears. It’s weird how much this means when we’re not bodies being dragged against each other until we make sparks. I can already feel goosebumps rising on the skin closest to him. It’s entirely different this time. It’s a whole new realm of possibility with the door just barely cracked open to us.

_Is this the beginning? Is this the end? Is this what it’s all leading up to?_ A voice that isn’t entirely mine or entirely Changkyun’s chants over the steady heartbeat. But it doesn’t matter what this is. There’s only ever been running away or succumbing. And we are finally too tired, too pliant to run anymore.

His hand finally closes over mine, his body half-on the bed. I shift my eyes from our joined hands to his eyes. The world doesn’t shift. The stars don’t realign for us. The universe doesn’t unfold to me. I don’t even reach nirvana. It’s just his warm hand over mine. Like it’s always been. Like it’s been a million times before.

His eyes curve up into the pretty beginnings of a full, loud, not-for-the-cameras laugh. And I’ve never been able to hold in my laughter around Changkyun. “Get over here.” I manage, pulling him towards me by our conjoined hands.

When his lips land on me it’s not even a kiss really. He catches the corner of my mouth, still laughing. I try to fix it, pulling him closer but my lips only catch his cheek. He ends up mostly on my chest, our legs tangled in our rush to get closer. And it’s like his laughter is the only sound in the world.

“Why are we so bad at this?” He laughs, giving up at getting a good kiss and resting his head on my chest.

The world doesn’t change. I’m not suffocated by the silence and shared noises between us anymore. Whatever was pulled tight in my chest when I first met him has been slack for years with the negligible space between us. It’s a subtle shift if it’s even anything. I lose my restlessness. The places where my skin touches his seem to pulse with possibilities. I can finally, clearly map out the universe in his eyes. It’s relief and it’s comfort, as small as it is.

“I think this isn’t bad at all.” I answer, tilting his face towards mine.

“Shut the fuck up.” He snorts. “Now you’re all mr. romance and cheesy comments.” But he cages me between his arms and finally kisses me, easy and sweet. Like the first rays of sunshine on a day off. “We’re always like this.” He murmurs.

And the bed on the other side of the room only holds Changkyun’s dirty clothes and used towel until we check out. Every hotel room we share for every nameless, blur of a city in America, we leave with only one used bed. And the universe doesn’t implode or expand. Neither of us become enlightened. The planets just keep spinning, the waves keep crashing against the shore and we just follow along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](angelinmyheartt.tumblr.com) [cc](https://curiouscat.me/Nitzer)


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